A Defense in Depth Approach for the IBM System z Platform

Overview: When mainframes were introduced in the early 1960s, networks were small and well-defined. Users were few and known within the organization. To gain access, a person needed to be on the premises, usually during regular hours. Physical data may have been susceptible to removal or theft, but if an unauthorized user did get into the system, the information stored there was typically limited to transactions and batch processing.

Today, in the era of big data, mainframes are connected to the Internet. Virtually anyone anywhere has 24x7 access to mainframe-based web servers via PCs and mobile devices. Mainframes are processing high volumes of data at greater speeds compared to any other point in history.